Airline traffic network planning may typically happen many months in advance of an anticipated usage of an airline schedule produced by such planning. On the other hand, an evaluation of a robustness of an airline schedule is typically done near the actual execution of the schedule (i.e., near or on the day of the flights comprising the schedule). Sometimes, airlines do not even know how robust their schedule is, nor do they know how to quantify and evaluate the robustness of their schedule. The robustness of schedule may only be known to them after the schedule has been operated (i.e., after it has been flown). Given the time, effort, and resources devoted to flight scheduling planning and optimization and the importance of the flight schedule to an airline, effective and accurate means for determining a robustness of an airline schedule.
Therefore, it would be desirable to design an apparatus and method that provides an automatic evaluation of a robustness of operations for an airline.